A/N: I feel like this is my first "real" chapter. The previous one was a dash-off to get through band camp, since I was all ready done with it and unwilling to relive it in my head. Hopefully I'm not introducing my characters too suddenly. Reviews are, of course, appreciated, and I'd especially like to know your favorite characters. I don't really have one; all of these are composites of people, real and imagined, that I really do adore.
Tobias shot out of the DMV like a rocket, unable to contain his joy. Fifteen and a half, finally, and in his hand was a probationary license. No driving after dark, no driving with other people in the car—like the Rez cops cared. All they fiddled with was whether he had a license, and whether he was sober, the second one more than the first. Not only that, but he knew half of them and the other half knew who he was through the first half. Geronimo was a small town, and small town cops were usually pretty good about that stuff.
In the parking lot was a Volkswagen Scirocco that Tobias had bought from the proceeds of his most recent show steer. All ready he'd been working on it; aftermarket wheels, and intake and a stereo thus far, but there was a lot more on the way, or so he said. With football after school and band before, he wasn't sure where the time was going to come from. Still, time wasn't an issue now, because he had his license.
Tobias's father had ingeniously agreed to tow the VW into Farmington for Tobias to get his license. Granted, Tobias had been driving around the property and to and from town since he was ten, but driving to the DMV for the express purpose of getting his license was a little too brash for his or his father's liking. Tobias got into the hatchback and drove off, Duane and his father in the Comanche behind him.
Zero hour, first day. Carl looked up and down his drum line, the eight of them, with interest. Two snares, one freshman, one sophomore, both of whom had marched for him last year; one tenor, him; and five bass drums, all of them eighth graders, none of them having been at band camp. Great. Not only was the best drummer the band had up on the podium, but his entire bass line were newbies. Carl's face still lit up, though, as he recalled the image of Nathan in his football jersey, wriggling out of his shoulder pads and into his harness, while the band marked time in wait. His being drum major had confused a lot of people, and left not only his coach, but Carl as well, in the lurch.
"All right," he said, "I know you bass drummers from last year's parade, but I'm a little fuzzy on names. You first." The drummers named themselves, and then Carl lined the five of them up by size. Five was a good number, even if they were rookies. It meant a full set of tonals, which gave him freedom to do all sorts of stuff with traveling cadences he couldn't otherwise. Assuming they figured it out in time. They would; he wasn't going to let them be the Achille's heel of the band. It wasn't going to happen. "You," he said to the tallest, "Go get the number five. You, four, you, three, two, one." He pointed at each drummer in turn, and watched them suit up before motioning for his snares to do the same. They could get into their drums, too; good for them.
Against a wall were a row of garment bags, all of them with blue and gold Geronimo uniforms hanging proudly. Carl found his easily; two chords, one on each shoulder, and his stomach turned. He was drum captain this year; last year's had graduated and his immediate successor was on the podium. The band was too small for individual sections; there were four clarinets, and they had the most of any instrument, so they broke up by instrument type. There were four captains: Carl, the drum captain; Lisa, Nathan's girlfriend, the wind captain; Malcolm Smith, who'd marched soprano with the Academy Drum and Bugle Corps that summer, the horn captain; and—he shuddered. The guard captain was Christine, a timid freshman, the only returnee to the color guard. There had been three of them last year; a senior, a junior and Christine, and the junior had quit after a falling-out with the coach. The tenor drummer had nothing but love for Christine, she was a great girl, especially for a freshman, but she was so quiet that he barely noticed her.
Rather than fuss about the guard girls, though, Carl turned to his own section.
"So, we're going to warm up and then go out there and join the band. We do a traveling bass warm-up, quarters, eighths, triplets, sixteenths, and later we'll do some quintuplets and thirty-seconds. We did some traveling in Farmington last year; you guys know what I'm talking about?" The middle school band, starting the previous year, marched with the high school in the Labor Day Parade in Farmington, the nearest sizable town to Geronimo. The middle school drummers worked with Carl, Nathan and the previous captain, Chris, for a week beforehand to get the cadences down, and Carl was now relying on that work to get them through this season. "Let's do this. A-one, a-two, a-one, two, ready, and."
The notes came. As Carl hit each of his five drums, the basses followed him. Good. They might just survive.
Christine drummed her fingers against her thigh impatiently, watching the color guard file past. They didn't actually have auditions for getting into the guard, but the coach had asked her to audition them for placement. There were more this year than last year; that was good, at least, but last year, they had been at band camp and now they weren't. Still, she watched the rookies take their places at the edge of the parking lot. She had inadvertently set it up such that they could see the band, which was a mistake, but what the hell, they would have to focus during the show, too.
"Okay, you first."
Kenny had his head straight forward as he marched the first set of their opener, but his eyes were elsewhere, across the parking lot, where Christine was drilling the guard-to-be. She paced up and down like a drill sergeant, but her voice was soft and understanding. Poor girl; she had no business in front of them. She was a lowly eighth grader the previous year, the girl who carried the extra flags and sat in the front seat of the band bus, behind Dr. Ramirez, but a cruel trick of fate had left her as captain. Kenny's gaze wasn't entirely sympathetic, though; his eyes feasted as she instructed the first girl to do her best toss. Then, suddenly, he stumbled.
"Son of a bitch!"
Christine whipped around to see Kenny standing like an idiot, impressed, and Nathan looking ready to kill him.
"What, Kenny, what is it?" asked Nathan, his voice full of repressed anger.
"Chick just threw a six."
"A what?"
"A six? Really?" Malcolm was suddenly interested. "Shit, I know DCI girls that can't throw a six."
"That's because the Hussars suck," said Kenny, "And have ridiculous tan lines."
"Oh, shut up."
Kenny led the band in applause, and Christine and the girl who'd made the throw both flushed.
"Who the hell is that?" asked Tobias from his spot.
"Dunno," said Nathan, "New girl, hella good with flags."
"Good at volleyball, too," added Lisa, "Varsity, as a sophomore."
The guard set their flags down and went for cool down stretches as Kenny stepped out of the band room. Shit. He felt like a pervert all ready.
"You guys need help?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow, pretending not to notice the four physically fit girls bending over.
"Sure," said Christine, "Grab that bundle of flags."
Kenny walked to where she had indicated and grabbed the flags. They were heavier than he'd thought, but that was good; his muscles rippled as he hoisted them.
"Inside?" he asked, hoping Christine would notice his strength. Then again, he thought, she probably did this every day last year. Fail.
"Yeah, outside the percussion closet. We'll put them away."
"I can do it."
"No you can't. Thanks, though."
"No problem."
Though he was disappointed for not getting more out of the exchange, he set the flags down and shrugged off his annoyance, figuring small things would stand almost as well in his stead as big ones, granted he did them constantly. Like opening doors for the colorguard as they came in—he sprinted to beat Tobias.
Amazingly, the rough-and-tumble Reservation boy's intentions were purer than the those of the hardworking Caucasian farm boy. As soon as Christine came through the opened door, Tobias bolted for her. Before he knew it, Kenny had a beautiful girl at his feet, with a six-four white boy on top of her. He took a step back, assessing the situation before making a moron of himself. Tobias? With Christine? What the fuck was with that? He'd told Kenny he was single, had been since the day he was born.
"Ow, shit," said Christine, getting up, "You got bigger. That hurts more than it used to."
Used to? Were they some kind of item? He decided to play it for humor.
"Uh, if you don't mind, what the hell was that?"
It worked. Christine laughed. "Awkward," said Tobias, "That's what that was. She, uh, played football last year. That happened a lot."
"Uh, yeah," said Christine, less embarrassed than Tobias. Kenny grinned inwardly; he had an ace up his sleeve. Or maybe the deuce of clubs, and his hand was all spades; there was only one way to find out.
"What position?"
There was absolutely nothing peculiar about the question; had she been a guy, it would have been routine, but she was a girl, and the fact that that was his first question showed he had an open mind. Or so he hoped.
"Uh, wideout," she said, "I was punt returner until Duane showed up."
"Did you play D?" Geronimo was so small that almost everyone played both sides.
"No," replied Christine with no discernible emotion, "I, uh, didn't have the balls to tackle anyone. No pun intended."
Damn, she was hard to read. Maybe he would ask Tobias. Still, the question didn't offend her, and that was probably better than the alternative. Great, now he sounded like Nathan.
Nathan was waiting in his truck when the New Mexico National Guard armory's doors swung open and out came fifteen or so kids in camo, or BDUs, as he girlfriend called them. Except she wasn't his girlfriend now, she was Cadet Chief Master Sergeant Downing, or Chief as the cadets called her. Were her relationships with her cadets of any sort other than what they were, he would have envied their closeness, almost enough to call her on it, but her love for them was strange and definitely not romantic—platonic was probably closer. She was either so impersonal as to be personal or so personal as to be impersonal; she called every cadet by his last name, and made them repeat themselves three times, louder each time, because she "couldn't hear them", and yet she knew when each of them was scheduled to promote, what sports each did, why each of them were cadets, and more. If they saw her at the mall, she would smile at them and be very Lisa-like, but they would still come to attention when she addressed them. He pounded his head into the steering wheel; he was afraid of his own girlfriend.
Except that wasn't it. He knew Lisa inside and out, knew what made her tick, could figure out why she was crying without being told—it was Chief Downing he was afraid of, her evil split personality. Chief reminded Nathan more of his father than of anybody; she was authoritative, pushy, even bossy at times, and yet totally logical about everything. Outside of the squadron, and a few neighboring ones, he was the only one who even knew of Chief's existence; he'd seen the persona one other time, when a now-sophomore flautist had refused to listen to Lisa the previous year because she hadn't been an upperclassmen, and the flautist had been reduced to tears and ran to be comforted by the drum major, with whom she was in love.
Fifteen minutes after the last cadet left, Chief stepped out. He could tell it was Chief by how she held her shoulders straight up and surveyed the parking lot, fixing her gaze on the Sierra. Nathan gulped, hoping he hadn't caught her in a bad mood. He'd only seen Chief mad that one time, and he didn't want to repeat the experience, especially not with him as the victim. Chief made for the car, and being drum major, Nathan picked up that she was walking in perfect cadence, one hundred twenty beats per minute. He could almost hear the "leyup, leyup, yo right, yo right," as she marched forward. She halted—not stopped, halted—at his door, and he opened it, looking down on her in her perfectly-pressed dress shirt and skirt.
"Why are you here?" she asked.
"Thought you might want some ice cream, since you made the drive out here."
"Good thinking," she said, "But no PDA."
"Roger."
She went around the hood, and she did so, he could see Chief become Lisa, and wondered how aware they were of each other.
"Hey, baby," he said as she climbed into his truck, settling into the racing seat he'd just invested in. The back seats were all ready gone, replaced by the custom sub enclosure he'd built in metal shop the previous year.
"Hey, Nathan," she said. She was no longer Chief but she was still in uniform; otherwise, she wouldn't have used his name. "Thanks for getting me. I'm a little stressed right now."
"I'm seeing that," he agreed, "Do you ever make your cadets cry?"
Her answer was as serious as his question. "I don't know," she said, "None of them would ever cry in front of me."
"Those kids worship you, babe."
"I know it, too." The truck had started to pull out by now. "That's what worries me. Power corrupts, and they've given me a lot of power. I tell them to jump, they ask how high and then want to know how well they did it. They listen to me over the Major."
The Major was a tall, imposing man, a retired Air Force pilot who Lisa had insisted that Nathan meet before they started dating. The Major had inspected Nathan as a father might, telling Lisa that he looked good, clean-shaved, and like he could do her a world of good. Nathan had called him "sir" and explained that gas and time precluded him from joining his organization, which the Major had met with a grudging nod. In truth, he wished he had joined, but he would be turning nineteen before too long and that would not allow him to be a cadet, meaning he would have to be a senior member, meaning he would outrank Chief, and simply put, that would be bad.
"How was it?" he asked.
"Oh, it was good," she said, "Color guard are as good as I've seen them, and there was a helluva turnout." Nathan had learned long since the difference between the Civil Air Patrol's color guards and the band's color guard. Big difference, big mistake not to learn it sooner.
"So why are you stressed?"
"I'm doing great commanding the squadron now," she said, "It's Kirtland I'm worried about."
Kirtland. He hated that word. It meant the winter Encampment, when she would be gone for a week and would come back exhausted and wanting to do nothing but sleep, precluding their ability to do anything until New Year's, at which point her father would not allow Nathan out of his sight. Not only was it robbing him of his girlfriend over winter break, though, it was also driving her out of her mind now. He was deathly afraid of her snapping at any moment, and so spent a disproportionate amount of time with the woodwinds, which was then construed as him neglecting the band for his girlfriend. There was no good way out of this; stupid, stupid Kirtland.
"I mean," continued Lisa, "I can command these kids because, as you say, they worship me. What about kids who've never met me? Who will likely hate my guts two hours after they report? What about them?"
"Don't know," said Nathan truthfully, "The trick is to be their friend when they expect it least. You see me do it with the band; maybe you can try it."
"Maybe."
The truck pulled into the Animas Valley Mall, which was nearly closed. Nathan parked close to the entrance to the food court, and walked in.
"Hey, guys!" yelled a person at a table as soon as they walked it. Wouldn't Nathan have known; it was Juan, eating ice cream. The mall was dark, silhouetting him against the blackness. The couple moved towards him and sat down.
"What are you doing here?" asked Nathan.
"Getting my last pay check," said Juan, motioning at the Baskin-Robbins"This is the first Friday I've had free since May."
"And the last one you'll have until basketball season," added Lisa, "Can we get some ice cream from your, uh, former employer?"
"Sure," said Juan, then, towards the shop, "Get these people some ice cream!"
Nathan reached for Lisa's hand and then remembered she was in uniform, so they went up to the counter separated. It felt weird, but somehow good; he was respecting her. Of course, he still wouldn't let her pay.
"Two scoops," he said, "Rocky road, and vanilla bean. She wants bubblegum and rainbow sherbet."
"What?" asked Lisa, "I haven't had rainbow sherbet in years! Why'd you order it?
"Because I knew you would want it." He winked, and she punched his arm.
At his table, Juan shook his head. There had been a time when he would have been jealous of Nathan, but now, he was just happy for them.
